


Part XI:  The Abduction

by A_Fine_Piece



Series: A Thin Red Line [41]
Category: Bleach
Genre: Abduction, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Horror, Love, Marriage, Worry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-07
Updated: 2016-08-07
Packaged: 2018-08-07 07:35:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7706020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Fine_Piece/pseuds/A_Fine_Piece
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a nightmare, Byakuya considers his own breaking points.  Rukia learns of Orihime's abduction.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Part XI:  The Abduction

**Part XI:  This Is Not A Game**

Autumn moonlight—

a worm digs silently

into the chestnut.

_—Matsuo Basho_

* * *

**The Abduction**

Blood, wet and profuse, fills Byakuya’s field of vision.  He can barely see, eyes stinging and head throbbing.  And, try as he might, he stands frozen, limbs leaden and useless.  He cannot so much as raise his sword or muster a low-level spell.  Everything has failed him.  His skill, his abilities, _everything_ has fled from him.

All he has is a pervasive sense of dread and _fear_ swelling in the pit of his stomach.  This is no ordinary fear, either.  It is potent, permeating through his circulatory and nervous systems until it has taken complete control of his body.

 _Hisana_. 

Her name haunts him, as if he is trying to summon a distant memory.  She isn’t there.  He racks his brain for what little ghost may still remain.

 _Bad decision_.

The once proud, noble Byakuya Kuchiki collapses.  On his knees, his equilibrium teeters.  The vision that assails him steals his breath and cuts him, like a blade to the heart.

His wife lays slain.  A heap of lifeless skin, bone, and hair.  Her remains are bloodied and battered. 

He cannot breathe.  He cannot think.  Reality shatters around him as he fights his paralysis, as he tries to reach out to her, praying that his touch can revive her.  Denial quickly eases the trauma, and his fingers curl into fists.  His nails press hard and deep into his palms until he can feel the prickle of pain.

His eyes snap open.  Darkness surrounds him.  His hands, once curled during his nightmare, relax, and he inhales a deep breath as he turns to Hisana and their children, all three in peaceful slumber.

The dreams are becoming more frequent, and the imagery grows more violent than ever before.  No one is safe from the fear that slowly consumes him and torments his mind.  Some nameless void renders him powerless and tortures his family—Hisana, his boys, Rukia—and he watches in silent horror, unable to do anything to prevent their painful demises. 

None of these terrors, however, _feel_ like dreams.  They _feel_ like hallucinations brought on by powerful drugs.  Or, worse, some sort of horrific ability heretofore undocumented as none of the men of the ranks possesses such a talent. 

Byakuya sits up and glances down at his left hand.  It still trembles.  He has not yet mastered the recent adrenaline dump, and he’s too wired to return to sleep.  So, tonight, like the last forty nights, he slides out of bed, and, quietly, he slips out of room and heads toward the library.

Hisana does not know.  None the wiser.  He thinks.  He hopes.

In the dim flicker of candle light, he wraps the silence around him, as comfortable as a blanket as he loses himself to the mundane.  Forms.  Signatures.  The written word.  He craves these things when all else goes askew.  He craves the feeling of familiarity as his mind goes on autopilot. 

Then, when he finds a quiet, thoughtless rhythm, he feels the air as it bends around an object.  His hands still, fingers wrapped around the slick wood of his brush.  As if falling under a spell, his eyes slip close, and he relishes the soft pressure of his wife’s lithe arms around his shoulders.  She nestles into the space between his neck and shoulder, as if it was a perfect fit for her chin.  It is.

She is a perfect anodyne for the poltergeist rampaging through his thoughts, and he inhales a deep breath.  She smells sweet, like cherry blossoms and spring, and his lips part in anticipation.

She seizes on this vulnerability—the vulnerability that she instills in him—as she nuzzles him, breath light and warm against his ear.  “What troubles milord?” she asks, voice equal parts tender and concerned.

It would be Hisana, the only one who could wrap him in comfort and then extract his deepest, darkest secrets.  He relents, finding peace in the decades of respect they have erected.  “There is something,” he murmurs, not wanting to worry her, but also not wanting to conceal his thoughts when she sought them out.  “It is uncertain.”  He does not want to raise her concern unnecessarily, but his feelings, devoid of fact, were so strong.  It borders on intuition, a thing that he rarely put much stock in, but a noisy thing, nevertheless. 

“Is it Aizen?” she asks, tilting her chin slightly to ensure her words remain between them. 

Her question rings hollow.  It does not pull his suspicion like it should, probably because whatever draws his fear is only _compounded_ by Aizen, but it is separate and apart from the traitors’ defection. 

“I don’t know.”  Honesty proves unsatisfying, and it proves to be the antithesis of everything he was taught to be as the head of his family.  He is supposed to be steadfast and unyielding, a stalwart for Soul Society in the worst of times.  But, Hisana knows better.  Hell, Rukia is quickly learning better.  He is flawed.  He doesn’t always have _all_ the answers, try as he might to keep them secure.  Sometimes, however, security is beyond even his grasp.

Hisana presses her whole body against his.  He isn’t sure if she is trying to calm his tangled nerves or her own.  Maybe both.  Gently, he reaches up and rests a hand against her arms, which loop low around his throat, like a necklace.

She brushes her lips against his neck, and he can feel the flutter of her eyelashes.  Heady, he opens his eyes and stares into the dim flickering light.  It captures in a smooth arrest.

“I am here,” she reminds him, sweetly, voice like honey, against the shell of his ear.  “Always.”

His eyelids droop, half-lidded. 

Perhaps that is the problem.  She is here.  His sons are here.  They are beautiful, and he loves them with every fiber of his being.  But love is weakness.  A clever soul, like Aizen, could easily take advantage, and he would be powerless.  If it ever came to a choice between his family and Soul Society, he knows he would be powerless.  Soul Society could burn to ashes under his watch if he could keep them safe. 

And that was no position to take as a Captain. 

Before the horror of what he had just admitted to himself could take hold, Byakuya drowns the chorus of traitorous feelings with a kiss from his wife, and, silently he acknowledges the evil that could blossom in him, if properly capitalized.

* * *

 

Sirens blaze.  Haunting.  Shrill. Cold.  The looping sounds resonate deep within Rukia as she springs into forward position in her bed.  Her eyes dilate.  Her heart thunders in her chest, and her throat aches against the pounding of her blood. 

This is not a drill. 

The sky has barely awoken.  There is no sunlight.  At its latest, it is four in the morning.

_What has happened?_

In an instant, her feet find the cool wood of the floor, and she is at the wind, eyes searching the horizon.  There is no smoke.  There is no fire.  The horizon is perfectly peaceful. 

Somehow, this only raises her anxiety. 

 _Brother would know_ , she thinks to herself, and, in a panic, she has flung back the door to her room, and she is roaming the halls.  She senses him in the library, his _de facto_ office when he is not at the Sixth.  Immediately, she draws the door back, and she finds him, sitting serenely with a hell butterfly perched on his fingertip. 

In silent horror, Rukia waits for her Brother to receive the full transmission.  When he does, the butterfly wings begin to beat, and it lifts off. 

Her Brother catches her with a quiet look.  His eyes betray not a shred of horror, worry, or panic.  Instead, he implores her nerves to cease their insidious crackle with a look.

“What is it?”  The words fall gracelessly and harshly from her lips.  It feels as if she has waited for this moment ever since her execution day.  She knew it was coming.  They all knew it was coming.  The “when” was never in question.  The how, however, kept her breath from releasing, forever caught in the pit of her throat.

She knew that Aizen’s next move would be deleterious.  Right then, however, she wants to know desperately what his retaliation has cost them.  She prays it isn’t anything dear, but the sirens howling behind her tell a different story.

Brother’s gray eyes bring reality crashing down around her.  It something terrible.  It is something unimaginable.  It is something they have not anticipated. 

“The girl,” and his voice, dark and broken, trails off before he can finish. 

“The girl!”  Rukia’s mind narrows only on one girl out of many.  _Orihime_.

“She has been taken.”

 _Taken_.

The word seems so perverse falling from his lips.  It sounds like code for something far worse.   It sounds like euphemism, as if Aizen had not only pillaged, he had plundered.

Rukia wants to break.  She wants to sink to the floor in despair, but she does not.  No.  In the midst of her horror and her defeat, she finds her resolve.  She finds her battle cry. 

Eyes cold and hard, she lifts her head.  “What do we do to get her back?”  Her voice sounds like it belongs to another woman.  A hateful, vengeful woman.  But, right then, she feels all those things.  Hate.  Vengeance. Womanhood. 

Orihime is her friend, and she will fight through the flames of hell to bring her back.  And she will raze Aizen’s house in the doing if he was arrogant enough to take her. 

Her Brother’s face betrays not a thought.  It is as impassive as it is beautiful.  Instead of maudlin sympathy, he levels her with a gaze.  Resolve burns in his gray eyes.  “Everything,” he murmurs. 

Then, suddenly, it becomes clear to Rukia.

All a revolution takes is one ill-timed offense.

And, Orihime’s abduction proved to be the _perfect_ catalyst.  


End file.
